Biting the Apple

It's a cold feeling, not knowing, a cold that starts in the marrow,
leaches out through the skin and leaves a glistening stink of ‘maybe' behind it.
Holding the unknown between two fingers, holding it like a rattler,
just below the jawline,
so it can't bite but close enough to count the venom drip drip drip.
It spins, clicks against the table,
so small it fits comfortably in the palm of a hand.
Deceptive size.
How can anything that tiny, that insignificant, that disposable
take away everything you thought you ever knew about anything?
How?
If it disappeared, sliding between fingers,
coming out of ears and pockets and going in again,
suddenly flying across the room to bury itself in the trash, abracadabra,
could time turn back into before?
But it boomerangs, bringing evil ignorance and the end of bliss, and now,
genie out of the lamp like a long overdue electric bill,
everything is dark.